


the steady running of the hour

by couldaughter



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? Absolutely Nothing.), Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, POV Multiple, Vignette, War, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26361571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: “It is not your fault,” he said.“How can you know that?” Joe asked, a trace of desperation in his voice. “How can we everpossiblyknow?”
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 24
Kudos: 140





	the steady running of the hour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myrmidryad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/gifts).



> CNTW because it's a war and even if the description of violence isn't particularly violent i still think it needs a content note, yknow? and the character death implication is related to the canonical mechanics of immortality
> 
> gifted to myrmidryad, for screaming with me about this movie for weeks on end <3

“This is not a war of ideals,” Nicky grumbled, around his cigarette. He exhaled a cloud of smoke and folded his arms more firmly, fingers curled in mud-encrusted wool.

Joe sighed and elbowed him in the ribs, dislodging some of the muck. “Don’t confuse the troops, _tenente._ ”

Nicky shook his head, but remained silent. It was rare that they found time alone together, packed in as the company was. Privacy was as precious as gemstones.

It was an old argument, of course. They — Nicky, Joe, Andy and Booker — had spent decades before the outbreak of war trying to diffuse tensions, travelling across Europe in search of some way to untangle the mess of treaties and _détentes_ and prevent the inevitable.

They were no closer to achieving that than they were to walking on the moon, the day a Serb shot an Archduke and set the domino run falling.

Nicky found it difficult to fight a war without principles. That had been true as long as Joe had known him even as his understanding of morality had evolved over time, _alhamdulillah_. He would certainly not have dedicated centuries to loving a man who fought for Christian hegemony, no matter how unfairly handsome.

The armband with its red cross both of them wore spoke of that conflict, somewhat. Those with no choice in whether they fought at all deserved a chance to live through it, they had all agreed, and so while Andy and Booker sweet-talked their way into the upper echelons of command, Joe had taken Nicky’s lead and trained for the medical corps.

It was in work as an orderly and a stretcher-bearer by turns that they found some reason for taking part in the conflict. Rotating between the front lines and the base hospital every few weeks was tough on the soul, but it was easier than spending each night scrubbing a young man’s guts from your bayonet.

It was also, as they had both discovered, an excellent excuse for coming in from No Man’s Land covered in blood. The holes each stray bullet left in their clothing were harder to pass off; it was a work in progress. Joe darned them while Nicky complained loudly of the moths fluttering around their heads, batting at nothing.

Speaking of — Nicky blew out another cloud of smoke and let his shoulders slump, pressing further into Joe’s side. Joe, accustomed to silent apologies, grinned and pushed back.

A high-pitched whistle cut through the continuous low hum of artillery. Joe suppressed a flinch and pushed away from the wall of the trench. “Showtime, _tesoro_ ,” he said, as Nicky ground out the fag end of his cigarette beneath the toe of his boot. “Try not to get shot again, please. It is very difficult carrying a stretcher single handed!”

“So you have told me many times,” Nicky retorted, eyes narrowed. “Perhaps if you could keep both attached to your wrists you would have less trouble.”

“Oh, your spirit shines through every word,” Joe replied, allowing his heart to bleed into his words. It was a good thing so few others in their posting spoke Arabic of any sort, let alone the koiné he and Nicky had developed through many lifetimes in each others’ company.

Only they really understood one another. Joe found it, to be honest, unbearably romantic of them.

* * *

No one liked to admit it, but it was easy to get used to war. Nicky had known it from the start; the monotony of marching to the Holy Land had worn him down even before he deadened himself to violence.

He felt each death even then, never quite able to convince himself that God wanted _this_ from his devotion, but he had allowed himself to be commanded and only questioned when his own death intervened.

All wars were different, of course, even if the day-to-day felt the same. New alliances formed and broke over centuries, a new language of war developed for each advance from the crossbow and cannon to heavy artillery and mustard gas. He had fought in dozens of them by then.

He still felt every death, his own or those of those he killed, but he had no delusions about how God felt about it now. His God, external and unknowable, worked _through_ his children, through the chaplains and doctors and the sharing of parcels from home.

So it was that within months of their arrival on the Front, he and Joe were used to this particular war. Used to the constant drone of mortar fire, the fear of gas and the constant itch of lice beneath their uniform.

There were certain things he had never been able to accept, though. He ran a hand through his hair and thought, ruefully, of the haircut he would soon be needing, sitting with his neck exposed to the company barber, a man with hands which shook at the sound of shellfire.

“A package,” said Joe, interrupting Nicky’s thoughts. He twisted in his seat to watch him as he came in, bent at the knees to stop his head brushing the roof of their tent. Joe held the parcel carefully in his hands, roughly-wrapped in brown paper and twine. Andy didn’t have the patience to wrap, and Booker hadn’t much practice, but they did their best.

The gas lamp flickered as Joe set the package on their rickety end table and collapsed onto his bunk, shoulders bowed. It cast long shadows on the canvas, and deep ones beneath Joe’s eyes.

Nicky was beside him in an instant, even as the bed complained at the weight of two fully grown men. Joe attempted a smile which failed to meet his eyes.

He has such beautiful eyes, Nicky thought, as he did several dozen times a day.

“Shall we see what the boss thought we might need this time?” He asked, quietly.

Joe nodded after a moment, chewing at his lip. “Might be another hot water bottle,” he said quietly, sounding choked. “Add it to the pile.”

“The rubber will perish eventually,” Nicky said. “It might be practical to have some spares, in fifty years or so.”

Joe hummed in agreement, but made no move towards the table. Nicky leaned across the narrow space and pulled it into his lap, unaccountably pleased by the rattling noise it made.

“It’s a kitten,” he joked, already sawing at the twine with his penknife. “But I think it may have had a hard journey.”

It wasn’t a kitten, thankfully. He removed the paper carefully and folded it onto the small pile of kindling he’d been accruing. It was difficult to break old habits, even with gas lamps for officers, and he couldn’t quite shake the desire for a good old-fashioned wood fire. It would certainly be warmer. He blew on his fingers and set the box down on Joe’s lap.

Joe glanced at him. He’d huffed a little at Nicky’s joke, but otherwise was still quiet. He took Nicky’s free hand, tangling their fingers together, and used his own to reach into their parcel.

They made short work of unpacking between them, a small pile of food and trinkets piled up on the bed at Joe’s side. The both of them had been working on half rations most days, giving the rest to the enlisted men who were far too young to look as hungry as they did. There were plenty of them in their company, ones Joe went out of his way to mother-hen because they were clearly only a few years removed from being tucked into bed with a bedtime story.

Half rations were not exactly filling, however, so the sight of properly preserved meat and tinned fruit was almost enough to make Nicky cry.

He squeezed Joe’s hand where it rested on his knee, reassured by the warmth of his skin. He had an idea of where Joe had gone inside his head. Whenever either of them did this, needing quiet time and comfort after a battle or in the lull of a siege, there was usually something that caused it, and it was usually a death.

Sometimes one of their own, the sort that some might dismiss as unimportant, and often one that wasn’t. A permanent one, under their hands.

Working in the hospital meant witnessing the sort of lingering deaths they rarely encountered in their own lives. The first time Nicky changed the bandages of a man with gas gangrene his stomach had roiled in a way it hadn’t in centuries.

Those deaths were hardest to bear, and that was what Joe was likely contemplating as he stared at the floor, brow furrowed. Nicky bumped their shoulders together, smiling a little when Joe came back to himself to snort.

“Nuisance,” he said quietly. He raised their joined hands to his mouth and kissed Nicky’s hand gently, lingering a moment, before releasing him to rest his face in his hands.

Nicky shrugged. “I have a lot of practice.” He flexed his fingers, feeling cold, and sighed. “It is not your fault,” he said.

“How can you know that?” Joe asked, a trace of desperation in his voice. “How can we ever _possibly_ know?”

It was a question that had plagued them for a long time. Nicky knew that Andy struggled with it still, and if she still didn’t know after millenia he had doubts for himself and Yusuf figuring it out soon enough for it to matter. “We can’t know,” he said, the same answer he’d been giving for centuries. “I suppose we have to have faith.”

He said it with some self-awareness, seeing just for a moment a reflection of himself impossibly younger, greatsword in hand and martyrdom in his sights.

Joe huffed, always understanding, and curled closer on the bed.

“You are such a hypocrite,” he murmured, face pressed into Nicky’s neck. “Whenever I try to say these things to you they never work.”

“Ah, but that is good practice for me,” said Nicky. He gave into the urge and kissed Joe’s forehead, reassured by the warmth. “And I would mope far more without it.”

* * *

Bodies littered the canal. Joe groaned as blood pooled beneath his stomach, feeling his internal organs — briefly external — regain their proper position at an agonising pace.

He grit his teeth against the pain and tried, unsuccessfully, to push himself to his feet. He made it to hands and knees, panting harshly, when he heard shouting from across the water.

Joe turned his head, feeling a laceration on his collarbone stretch and stitch as he moved. They’d died probably a dozen times each in 1918 alone, but it still unnerved him to be separated from Nicky as he died.

It was easy enough to pick him out now, though, crouched by the side of a fallen soldier. Joe forced himself to his feet, heard the gentle harmony of bullet casings hitting stone below him, and waded across the canal. The duckboards they’d laid had been less than ideal in the circumstances, but Joe found it hard to complain when his developing trench foot was medically unlikely.

He waved an arm, hoping that any snipers would have moved on while he was dead. “Nicolò, _sono qui_!”

Nicky looked up only for a moment, but it was long enough for a thousand words to pass between them, relief and gratitude suffused in the shape of his mouth. Joe crouched across from him, steadying himself with one hand on the grass, and inspected their patient.

“He’s alive,” Nicky murmured. “Bad wound though. Needs moving carefully.”

The patient — a second lieutenant, dark brown hair and a thin moustache, barely conscious — groaned a little as Joe took over from Nicky, putting pressure on a bad wound on his thigh.

“The muck won’t help,” said Joe, trying not to dwell on how familiar the feeling of blood seeping between his fingers had become. “Don’t want an infection.”

“No exit wounds,” Nicky noted, as he drew a tourniquet tight around the upper thigh. “And he landed on his back. He may be lucky.”

“He’ll lose the leg, said Joe, not disagreeing.

Nicky nodded. “But he will live.” He said it in the way he had prayed, when they first met. Words spoken with the utmost conviction that he would be heard, and helped.

“Someone should,” said Joe. Hundreds of bodies lay around them, the remnants of a battle which had long since moved on towards Sambre.

They sat a moment longer, watching the second lieutenant’s chest rise and fall steadily.

Someone shouted in the distance. Joe pushed himself to his feet, the pain in his stomach long vanished, and went to fetch the stretcher.

**Author's Note:**

> i have a lot of Feelings about the way that warfare has become more and less brutal over time and i'm sure the old guard too, hence a little bit of philosophical musing and a whole lot more that i cut out because let's be real, these two can have a whole debate with a look and i didn't want to overdo the dialogue
> 
> *screams* THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH
> 
> title is from 'strange meeting' by wilfred owen, someone i definitely did not include in this fic out of a longstanding and impossible desire to travel back in time and rescue him from dying ONE WEEK BEFORE THE ARMISTICE. strange meeting also has Vibes for joe and nicky i think but that might end up being a literal essay so i'll pause the thought here
> 
> it's fine. read his [love letters](http://rictornorton.co.uk/owen.htm) and enjoy pain 
> 
> on tumblr/twitter as @dotsayers! sometimes i post early snippets of wips, sometimes i watch horror movies from the 30s, sometimes i shave my head. it's a mixed bag


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